Rabin assassin’s confession released

October 23, 2007 9:00am

Israeli police released footage of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin confessing to the 1995 murder.

Ahead of events this week marking 12 years since Rabin’s death, Israel’s national Police Chief Dudi Cohen gave the late prime minister’s daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, never-before-seen video images of Yigal Amir being interrogated for the assassination hours after his arrest.

The footage, which was broadcast on Israeli television Monday, shows Amir describing how he waited for Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally and shot him three times before being subdued by security guards.

Amir, who was then a law student with far-right political affiliations, says he began hatching his plot after Rabin signed the first Oslo accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Asked by a police officer whether he has regrets about murdering the prime minister, Amir says: “Heaven forbid!”

In statements to the media, Rabin’s relatives indicated that they wanted Amir’s confession published to counteract the apparent spread of public sympathy for the assassin, who was jailed for life. Amir is expecting his first child after winning the right to conjugal visits, and opinion polls suggest a growing number of Israelis favor commuting his sentence and believe he was not responsible for Rabin’s death.

“The voice of sanity, the voice of law and order, may not have been sufficiently heard,” Rabin-Pelosoff told Israel Radio.

Wednesday is the anniversary of the assassination using the Hebrew calendar.